ABSTRACT
The four-year critical ethnographic study that instigated the writing of this book began with an investigation of how immigrant high-school students born in Hong Kong used Cantonese as well as English to achieve academic and social success in a Toronto school where English was the language of instruction. Much had been written on teaching strategies for accommodating English as a second or other language (ESOL) high school students in such schools, and setting them up for academic success. However, much less had been written about how students themselves used different languages to achieve success.2 The
1 See Perry and Delpit (1998). 2 Educational theorists, educators and applied linguists who have written
about ways of creating effective and equitable learning environments that respond to the needs of a linguistically diverse high-school student population include Coelho (1998); Corson (2001); Cummins (1996); Genesee (1994); González and Darling-Hammond (1997); Hernández (1995); Jaramillo and Olsen (1999); McGroarty and Faltis (1991); Nieto (2000); and Pennycook
findings revealed that although the use of Cantonese contributed to academic and social success of in a number of ways, it also created different kinds of linguistic and academic dilemmas for teachers and students in the school. Influenced by contemporary Canadian discourses, beliefs, and policies around immigration and language use, these dilemmas and issues were complex and required skillful negotiation.3 I learned a lot from watching and listening to the ways students and teachers negotiated academic and linguistic dilemmas at Northside, and I wanted to share what I had learned with other educators working in multilingual communities.
